4 ms·

Imagine this: I am a human programmer. I work a lot with FOSS. I learn a lot from FOSS. I go on StackOverflow and answer a bunch of questions. The answers I

by dools 4y ago

Imagine this: I am a human programmer. I work a lot with FOSS. I learn a lot from FOSS. I go on StackOverflow and answer a bunch of questions. The answers I give are based on all the shit I learned working with FOSS. Is SO infringing copyright by publishing my answers? I would think that "NO" would be the obvious answer. Copilot is no different. There is no way this would hold up in court.

thomastjeffery 4y ago
That's not what Copilot does. It isn't parsing the code, learning what it does, then applying the concept to generate new structurally/functionally similar code. We like to imagine that's what it's doing, because the utility of what it actually does can have a similar end result. What Copilot actually does is read every line of code from a project, and keep a dataset built around what code tends to have been written adjacent to what other code. Copilot's output is literally a translation of the code it was "trained on", using data about that code to do its translations.
- dools 4y ago
  > What Copilot actually does is read every line of code from a project, and keep a dataset built around what code tends to have been written adjacent to what other code. No it reads every line of code from EVERY project. It is not reproducing code from individual coders, it is reproducing patterns deduced from the work of millions of coders. It's like Smart Compose in Gmail. Copyright on anything I write is mine by default, but Gmail can of course take all things written by everybody and then use it to train a thing that detects what I probably mean and offer sentence auto completion in Gmails.
  - breakingcups 4y ago
    Here it is reproducing a function from the source code of Quake verbatim. https://twitter.com/mitsuhiko/status/1410886329924194309 https://twitter.com/mitsuhiko/status/1410886329924194309
    - dools 4y ago
      In that recording, prior to any auto completion the coder types: // fast inverse square root float Q_ I can get access to the same code if I search “// fast inverse square root” in google: https://www.google.com.au/search?q=%22%2F%2F+fast+inverse+square+root%22&client=safari&hl=en-au&ei=ppa0YrWHHKuVseMP-KmY8AY&oq=%22%2F%2F+fast+inverse+square+root%22&gs_lcp=ChNtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXdpei1zZXJwEAMyAggpMgYIABAeEBYyBggAEB4QFjIGCAAQHhAWMgYIABAeEBYyBggAEB4QFjIGCAAQHhAWMgYIABAeEBYyBggAEB4QFjoICCEQHhAWEB06BQghEKABOgQIIRAVOggIABAeEA8QFjoHCCEQChCgAUoECEEYAVClEViFL2DlNGgAcAB4AIABlgKIAYURkgEFMC45LjOYAQCgAQHAAQE&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-serp https://www.google.com.au/search?q=%22%2F%2F+fast+inverse+sq... The float Q_ is a partial code match so obviously that requires a more specialised search engine such as copilot. But all this example demonstrates is that copilot is a great code search engine allowing me to easily find code that is published publicly on the internet
      - breakingcups 4y ago
        Without regard for license. You seem to have moved the goalposts, originally said: > It is not reproducing code from individual coders, it is reproducing patterns deduced from the work of millions of coders. But now you say it is a search engine for finding code snippets from the internet. You really fail to see how this is a problem? Sticking with your analogy: > It's like Smart Compose in Gmail. Copyright on anything I write is mine by default, but Gmail can of course take all things written by everybody and then use it to train a thing that detects what I probably mean and offer sentence auto completion in Gmails. How would you feel if I could reproduce your entire personal email verbatim just by starting it with "Hi <unique mother's name>" and letting Gmail complete it for me? How would that hold up in your analogy?
        dools 4y ago
        > But now you say it is a search engine for finding code snippets from the internet. You really fail to see how this is a problem? Can’t it be both? If you already know a specific piece of code well enough that you could find it in a search engine, then it reproduces that code. If not it’s reproducing general code patterns. I don’t see why they can’t both be valid use cases and I don’t see how the latter use case infringes the rights of the Quake coders any more that search engines that already exist. > How would you feel if I could reproduce your entire personal email verbatim just by starting it with "Hi <unique mother's name>" and letting Gmail complete it for me? How would that hold up in your analogy? I think to match what’s happening in the quake example provided I would have had to publish a specific conversation online, and then you would have to start your text quoting my conversation exactly such that it couldn’t match any other published conversation, and then it would provide it as an auto complete. This wouldn’t infringe on my rights any more than if you were to copy my conversation from the internet into an email and send it. It would also be about as useful to you as the above Quake example which is not very.
pxeger1 4y ago
You explicitly grant SO a licence (CC-BY-4.0) on your answers when you post them. If those answers contain copyrighted material, you must have the right to publish them and to relicence them under CC-BY-4.0. If you don't, you're the one who's broken the law, not StackOverflow.
- dools 4y ago
  But what if my answers don’t contain any copyright material but all of my expertise in a given subject comes from having learned copyright material and then practised it so that it is firm in my memory and understanding to the extent that I can produce the required solution?

by dools 4y ago

thomastjeffery 4y ago

That's not what Copilot does. It isn't parsing the code, learning what it does, then applying the concept to generate new structurally/functionally similar code. We like to imagine that's what it's doing, because the utility of what it actually does can have a similar end result. What Copilot actually does is read every line of code from a project, and keep a dataset built around what code tends to have been written adjacent to what other code. Copilot's output is literally a translation of the code it was "trained on", using data about that code to do its translations.

dools 4y ago
> What Copilot actually does is read every line of code from a project, and keep a dataset built around what code tends to have been written adjacent to what other code. No it reads every line of code from EVERY project. It is not reproducing code from individual coders, it is reproducing patterns deduced from the work of millions of coders. It's like Smart Compose in Gmail. Copyright on anything I write is mine by default, but Gmail can of course take all things written by everybody and then use it to train a thing that detects what I probably mean and offer sentence auto completion in Gmails.
- breakingcups 4y ago
  Here it is reproducing a function from the source code of Quake verbatim. https://twitter.com/mitsuhiko/status/1410886329924194309 https://twitter.com/mitsuhiko/status/1410886329924194309
  - dools 4y ago
    In that recording, prior to any auto completion the coder types: // fast inverse square root float Q_ I can get access to the same code if I search “// fast inverse square root” in google: https://www.google.com.au/search?q=%22%2F%2F+fast+inverse+square+root%22&client=safari&hl=en-au&ei=ppa0YrWHHKuVseMP-KmY8AY&oq=%22%2F%2F+fast+inverse+square+root%22&gs_lcp=ChNtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXdpei1zZXJwEAMyAggpMgYIABAeEBYyBggAEB4QFjIGCAAQHhAWMgYIABAeEBYyBggAEB4QFjIGCAAQHhAWMgYIABAeEBYyBggAEB4QFjoICCEQHhAWEB06BQghEKABOgQIIRAVOggIABAeEA8QFjoHCCEQChCgAUoECEEYAVClEViFL2DlNGgAcAB4AIABlgKIAYURkgEFMC45LjOYAQCgAQHAAQE&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-serp https://www.google.com.au/search?q=%22%2F%2F+fast+inverse+sq... The float Q_ is a partial code match so obviously that requires a more specialised search engine such as copilot. But all this example demonstrates is that copilot is a great code search engine allowing me to easily find code that is published publicly on the internet
    - breakingcups 4y ago
      Without regard for license. You seem to have moved the goalposts, originally said: > It is not reproducing code from individual coders, it is reproducing patterns deduced from the work of millions of coders. But now you say it is a search engine for finding code snippets from the internet. You really fail to see how this is a problem? Sticking with your analogy: > It's like Smart Compose in Gmail. Copyright on anything I write is mine by default, but Gmail can of course take all things written by everybody and then use it to train a thing that detects what I probably mean and offer sentence auto completion in Gmails. How would you feel if I could reproduce your entire personal email verbatim just by starting it with "Hi <unique mother's name>" and letting Gmail complete it for me? How would that hold up in your analogy?
      - dools 4y ago
        > But now you say it is a search engine for finding code snippets from the internet. You really fail to see how this is a problem? Can’t it be both? If you already know a specific piece of code well enough that you could find it in a search engine, then it reproduces that code. If not it’s reproducing general code patterns. I don’t see why they can’t both be valid use cases and I don’t see how the latter use case infringes the rights of the Quake coders any more that search engines that already exist. > How would you feel if I could reproduce your entire personal email verbatim just by starting it with "Hi <unique mother's name>" and letting Gmail complete it for me? How would that hold up in your analogy? I think to match what’s happening in the quake example provided I would have had to publish a specific conversation online, and then you would have to start your text quoting my conversation exactly such that it couldn’t match any other published conversation, and then it would provide it as an auto complete. This wouldn’t infringe on my rights any more than if you were to copy my conversation from the internet into an email and send it. It would also be about as useful to you as the above Quake example which is not very.

pxeger1 4y ago

You explicitly grant SO a licence (CC-BY-4.0) on your answers when you post them. If those answers contain copyrighted material, you must have the right to publish them and to relicence them under CC-BY-4.0. If you don't, you're the one who's broken the law, not StackOverflow.

dools 4y ago
But what if my answers don’t contain any copyright material but all of my expertise in a given subject comes from having learned copyright material and then practised it so that it is firm in my memory and understanding to the extent that I can produce the required solution?